15 D.C. power couples

The new administration is staffed by an especially large contingent of power couples.

Story Continued Below

Here are 15 of them:

Shere Abbott and James Steinberg

These connected Beltway insiders ironically spent most of former President George W. Bush’s second term in his home state of Texas, where Steinberg was dean of the public affairs school at the University of Texas and Abbott directed the university’s sustainability program.

But Steinberg, 56, who was a national security adviser in the Clinton administration, kept in the game, advising the Obama campaign and transition on foreign policy issues. In December, he was nominated to be the No. 2 official at the State Department.

Abbott, 53, was tapped in March to handle environmental and energy policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

They married in 1994 and have two young daughters they adopted from China.

Sarah Feinberg and Dan Pfeiffer

If communication is key to a successful marriage, this couple should be in great shape.

Feinberg, 31, is a senior adviser and spokeswoman for Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, while Pfeiffer, 33, is deputy White House communications director.

They first crossed paths — albeit only over the phone — in 2000 while working in the communications shop of then-Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign. They were in different cities, but they talked about 10 times a day for four months, finally meeting in person after the campaign. They became an item in 2002 while working in South Dakota on Sen. Tim Johnson’s reelection campaign, then married in 2006.

Pfeiffer worked out of Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters while Feinberg came to the White House via Emanuel’s congressional office.

Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn

He’s on the outside, she’s on the inside, but both of these veteran Beltway Democrats are key players in Obamaland.

Bauer, 57, was Obama’s top campaign lawyer and occasional legal bulldog. Although he didn’t take an administration job, he represents the Obama family in personal matters, such as in the federal investigation of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich as well as President Obama’s outside political network and the Democratic National Committee.

Dunn, 51, a longtime admaker, was a senior adviser to the Obama campaign but initially avoided entering the administration. In April, she took over as White House communications director. They live in Chevy Chase with their cats, Kinsey, an orange tabby, and Sticky, a white part-Siamese.

Jeremy Bernard and Rufus Gifford

After the election, Bernard and Gifford left their home in Los Angeles and joined thousands of Obama supporters descending on Washington hoping to score a job in Obamaland.

They had a leg up: Bernard and Gifford had raised tens of millions of dollars for the campaign as its top California finance consultants. They ended up working for the inaugural committee before landing high-powered gigs — Bernard, 44, as Obama’s liaison to the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Gifford, 34, as the DNC’s national finance director.

“We really didn’t know what to expect, so it was a little bit of an adventure,” said Gifford, who met Bernard at a meeting of gay activists working on Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. The pair shuttered their fundraising consulting firm to start anew in D.C.

“We’ve been riding this wave for two years. We can’t stop now,” Gifford recalled thinking after the election.

Antony Blinken and Evan Ryan

Vice President Joe Biden has a reputation for surrounding himself with longtime loyalists, but Blinken and Ryan have earned spots in his inner circle relatively quickly.

Blinken, 47, national security adviser to the vice president, joined Team Biden in 2002 as a top aide to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Biden was the top Democrat, and signed on to Biden’s presidential campaign in 2007.

Ryan, 38, is Biden’s assistant for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison. She worked for Biden’s political action committee in 2006 and was deputy campaign manager for his 2008 presidential bid.

They met at the White House in 1995, when she was working for then-first lady Hillary Clinton and he was a National Security Council staffer. They married in 2002.